


hold on to your heart

by viscassia



Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Beach Trip, F/F, Fluff, Gay Panic, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Moving On, Mutual Pining, Post-Break Up, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, Underage Drinking, everyone is gay i don't make the rules
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22280635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscassia/pseuds/viscassia
Summary: Aaron breaks it off with her right before the summer starts. Her friends try to pick up the pieces.orthe summer after highschool fic where gretchen wieners has a summer home, janis sarkisian has a homophobic aunt, cady heron is newly single, and regina george is hiding a secret.
Relationships: Karen Smith/Gretchen Wieners, Regina George & Janis Sarkisian, Regina George/Cady Heron
Comments: 60
Kudos: 184





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> welp, after 1 month of sporadic writing, 3 months of abandonment, and 2 weeks of picking this back up again, i finally finished my self-indulgent cady/regina beach fic because nobody writes for these two even despite the gay subtext in the musical being so strong between them. 
> 
> don't worry about me leaving this forever because everything is already written!
> 
> title is from ['the longest time'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_izt7vlJKM0) by billy joel, which i'd recommend listening to at least once while reading this.
> 
> without further ado: 8 chapters of the beach fic that nobody asked for, but i wrote anyway

**HOLD ON TO YOUR HEART.**

**PROLOGUE:**

Aaron breaks it off with her right before the summer starts. Granted, the long-distance thing was not working out well; with him being too busy at college and her having _way_ too much free time as a senior, days would pass without so much as a ‘good morning’ and ‘good night’. She would be bored out of her mind while he would be too busy to even call. 

Cady sees the break-up coming from miles away, starting with their fights increasing and their dates decreasing like an inverse function turned real-life situation. Their relationship has been strained for the last month and she wakes up sometimes wondering if their love is still there, if it ever even existed to begin with, or whether it was just some high school puppy crush.

The foresight doesn’t make the break-up hurt any less, though. 

Aaron comes over on the Saturday after her graduation (which he couldn’t make it to), driving an old baby-blue pickup truck they’ve shared countless kisses and embraces in for the past year. He steps inside and talks to her and breaks up with her the _right_ way, if there ever was a right way to break up with someone.

It starts with a tentative, “Can I talk to you?” and it ends with “We can still be friends.” but all she hears in her head is ‘ _it’s over, it’s over, it’s over_ ’. He sends her one last smile, dimple painting his cheek the same way it did the first time she saw him, and she remembers why she fell so hard for him in the first place. The memories come rushing back — soft voice and dark brown eyes, perfect hair with the gentlest curl, and strong arms she could always rely on to lift her up when she was down. She wonders if this is the right thing to do, to let that all go, but then she also remembers yelling into her landline at 3AM because she never saw him anymore, the days she spent staring at her phone screen, praying for a message that would never come, and the endless cancelled dates that led to even more arguments later on, fights that would last the whole night, even _days_ when she was worked up enough.

She doesn’t cry until his truck has turned the street corner, and that’s the last time she sees Aaron until summer ends.

* * *

Two weeks into the summer, Gretchen invites their friend group to a 3-day, out-of-town beach trip. When Cady pitches the idea to her parents, they agree a little _too_ quickly, even her mother voices out her approval even though she is usually a little more strict about these sorts of things. 

(Granted, a lot of it may have been because she’s done nothing the whole week apart from mope in her room and eat Ben & Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream straight out of the tub, which really isn’t how any teenager fresh out of high school should behave.)

She told her friends about Aaron, typing in the news into their group chat a day after the break-up, and they took it pretty well — _well_ , as well as she expected. Janis and Damian had quickly defended her, calling him ‘too good for her’ and sending her memes that made her laugh (at least a little bit). Gretchen had promised that Cady would _definitely_ find someone else with her ‘assets’ and that she had around two dozen interested boys at the push of a button if she just asked. Karen had sent a few sad emojis to the group, but also private messaged her a photo of her tabby cat, Princess, asleep on the windowsill. 

It surprisingly made her feel a lot better.

Regina, for the most part, was unnervingly silent. She sent a brief, ‘Here if you need me, Cady. You can talk to me anytime.’ but had otherwise offered nothing. She could understand that. Given their shared history with Aaron, anything more might have been awkward.

Regina hadn’t been absent, though. 

The ex-Plastics showed up at her house the Monday after the break-up, ferociously led by Regina George armed with a plethora of miscellaneous items. A movie (‘Devil Wears Prada’), popcorn, soda, candy, and a giant stuffed lion that Regina handed to her without batting an eye, as though gifting your friends a toy more than half their height was as regular as tipping a dollar. Cady (predictably) named the lion Simba and they’d spent the night in her room, watching movies, sharing snacks, and gossiping about anything and anyone without so much of a mention of Aaron. 

It fills the hole for a little while, making her feel a little less lost.

That night, Gretchen spends 15 minutes talking about her beach house along Lake Michigan and how her parents were allowing them to stay there unsupervised for a few days during the summer. Initially, she plans the trip to include only herself, Karen Regina, and Cady, but when Regina suggests to invite Janis and Damian — the two technically being a part of their group, having eaten in the same lunch table all of senior year — Gretchen happily agrees.

“Oh, yeah definitely! I just wasn’t sure if you wanted them to come or if it would be awkward because of Janis,” Gretchen says, laughing nervously because Regina glares at her as soon as she mentions Janis. Quickly, she tries to alleviate the situation. “I mean, not that it’s awkward anymore since you two made up during Spring Fling but, like, you know, it might be weird with your history, plus beaches and swimming and bathing su—”

“Gretch,” Regina says through gritted teeth. “Do us all a favour and shut up.”

Cady laughs at Gretchen’s frantic nod and thinks that while Regina’s definitely changed a lot since the bus (she smiles more and actually _apologises_ when she makes mistakes now) there’s still a lot about the former Plastic that remains. 

Regina George is still unapologetically a bitch, but she’s softened a little more around the edges judging by the endearing looks she throws at her closest friends and the way she hugs Cady before she leaves that night, once more reminding her that she was always there when she needed her.

“I’ll see you at Gretchen’s beach trip?” Regina asks when she pulls away. She’s throwing her a little smirk, her hand cocked on her hip in a confident stance that is _so_ on brand of her (assuming Cady was using that expression right).

“I’ll have to ask my parents, but I hope so,” Cady replies.

“Great,” Regina says. For a moment, a flash of hesitation paints Regina’s eyes, as though she wanted to say something important, but it disappears in an instant leaving Cady wondering if it was ever really there. “They’ll say yes. Love ya!”

Regina throws her a kiss and she pretends to catch it and throw it back. The girl laughs a little before stepping into her car and driving down the street, the same direction Aaron went when he left her only two days ago. 

Something pulls at her gut and she starts to feel a little nauseous, so she steps back into her room and pulls up another movie from her growing collection of DVDs.

There’s one more thing she loves about America, she supposes, being able to drown your sorrows and avoid your anguish in easily accessible media. She falls asleep to Lion King 2 at the scene when Simba casts Kovu away while singing some ballad about deception and disgrace. She’s cuddling with her giant stuffed lion that smells a little bit of lemon shampoo, and she dreams of simpler days in Kenya under a sky whose stars burned brighter.

Janis and Damian come over on Wednesday armed with what she assumes is their own break-up cure. It’s startlingly similar to what the Plastics brought, movies, popcorn, and drinks, but instead of a giant stuffed toy, Janis brings a canvas. She gives it to Cady with a roll of eyes, but what’s on it takes her breath away — it’s her, or at least she thinks it’s her, grinning with eyes bright and hair flying everywhere, wearing her Mathletes jacket and bearing a silver crown atop her head. The background is a plain black apart from splashes of yellow and white, enough that it looks like a clear night sky.

“It’s you during Spring Fling, Junior Year,” Janis says, turning a dark shade of red. “It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen you, so...I made it to remind you of that happiness. That you deserve it with or without Aaron.”

“You’re a star too, honey,” Damian chimes in as Cady tries and fails to hide the tears in her eyes. He pulls the three of them into a hug which Janis weakly protests against, and Cady feels a little warmer than before.

“Thanks, you guys,” she says, sniffling a little as they pull away. “You really didn’t have to.”

“We _wanted_ to,” Damian says. “Other than failed revenge plots, what are friends for?”

That night is a little messier. She cries over Aaron and talks about things that could have been, and she copes by eating all of the popcorn they brought over. She talks about how she misses his smile, how she misses holding his hand, and how she wishes she still had someone who would freak out over cute exotic animals as much as he would. 

But then she also admits that their relationship could be difficult and over-dramatic, and that the distance did nothing but hurt the both of them. She recalls Aaron’s easy laughter, his reassuring gaze, but she also remembers his bluntness at being too busy for her, the rare times he’d raise his voice and complain that she was too unreasonable and _needy_.

“Sometimes these things don’t work out, Caddy,” Damian says sagely as she cries into his shoulder. “It doesn’t make you nor him any less of a good person. What you had was good, but it’s over and you should focus on moving on from that.”

“Besides, first relationships aren’t bound to last,” Janis adds, warranting a glare from Damian. Cady just laughs because Janis says it so nonchalantly, so surely, like she knew it _wouldn’t_ have worked out all along. 

Maybe it wouldn’t have. 

“Now you can have a hot girl summer.”

“Hot girl summer?” Cady asks, wiping away what is hopefully the last of her tears, and Damian moves on to explain. The topic goes from that to Gretchen’s beach trip which she had formally invited everyone else to yesterday night on the group chat.

“Are you guys planning to go?”

“Yes!” Damian says immediately. Surprisingly, Janis also nods her confirmation. “I’ve got nothing to do and Janis’ parents are away, so we decided to just come along.”

“I’d have to spend the week with my homophobic Aunt Ruth otherwise,” Janis shrugs. “Besides, it’s not like I have anything against the Plastics anymore. We’ve had our revenge and Regina...she’s a decent enough person now for me to stand her. Contrary to what stereotype dictates I should enjoy, I actually like the beach. It could be fun.”

“It _will_ be fun,” Damian corrected.

“Whatever. Just don’t expect me to bring a swimsuit.”

Cady gasps. 

“Oh my god, a _swimsuit_! I don’t actually have anything for the beach apart from this red wetsuit I used once when we went scuba diving in Kisite Mpunguti,” Cady says, eyes widening. “You think I can just bring that?”

“Oh, Caddy, _no!_ Think about your hot girl summer!” Damian says, grimacing. “We’ve got to take you shopping. The wetsuit simply won’t do for Montauk.”

“I _like_ the wetsuit…” Cady murmurs, but it’s too late because Damian is already texting Regina and coordinating a trip to the mall this Saturday. They have around two weeks before the actual trip, which gives them a lot of time _objectively_ , but Cady’s been Spring Fling dress shopping with the Plastics before and she knows that this is probably already enough of a time crunch to change her summer wardrobe from summer-in-Kenya to summer-in-Chicago. 

Janis just rolls her eyes and crosses the room to Simba whom she inspects suspiciously. “Where’d you get this from?”

“Regina gave it to me on Monday,” Cady says, not missing Damian’s raised eyebrows. “The Plastics came over to comfort me after the whole Aaron thing too, and they brought the lion along with them. His name’s Simba.”

“Huh...okay,” Janis says, eyes narrowing at the lion. “ _Regina_ gave it to you?”

“Uh, yeah?” Cady says, perplexed on why it mattered so much.

“Hm, alright,” Janis says. Cady’s about to ask what her deal is with the giant stuffed toy, but then Damian gets a text from Regina confirming a shopping day on Friday with Gretchen and Karen and he immediately begins planning out a colour scheme for each of the three days, bouncing his suggestions off Cady and Janis; both who could _not_ be more lost.

“Ugh, Janis, you useless lesbian,” Damian grumbles as Janis fixes him a blank stare in response to his conundrum on whether white was better than off-white for day two. “And Cady, you useless hetero, what happened to the fashion sense you had in Junior Year?”

“That was all Regina, Damian,” Cady says, laughing as Janis sticks her tongue out at him. They spend the rest of the night simply enjoying each other’s company and Cady wonders what she did to deserve friends like these. 

When they leave later that night, Cady, for just a moment, thinks of Aaron, hoping he’s got as strong of a support system in Northwestern University as she did here with her friends from Northshore. She sends a small wish his way and retires for the night, dreaming of blue pick-up trucks and kind smiles.

She wakes up aching the next day, giving in and checking her phone for a ‘good morning’ message that never comes. What she gets instead is a text from Regina informing her that they’re going shopping on Friday and that she would be picking her up at 10AM.

‘How much money do I have to bring?’ she texts.

‘It’s on me.' comes Regina’s prompt reply.

Shopping with the Plastics plus Damian is just as chaotic as she expects it to be. They go through every store in the mall, trying out clothes in each shop for an hour then leaving with nothing. It’s exhausting and it boggles her how they can do this for _fun_.

Cady picks out some things, though. She gets a cute yellow sundress that flows soft and light and ends just above her knee. Karen hands her a hat to match it with and Gretchen says she has a side bag that would go just _perfectly_ with the look (" _So_ _fetch!_ "). Damian finds these light-washed denim shorts that ride up her legs a little higher than she’s used to, and he squeals when she pairs it with a white tank-top and sneakers. It would be good for the day three, he muses, handing her a tiny, colourful backpack to pair with it.

Regina brings her to the bikini section where they spend an hour perusing swimsuits that all look the same to Cady apart from their colour.

“How does anyone swim in these things without them falling off anyway?” she asks as Regina pulls out a light blue bikini decorated with printed yellow lemons. Cady almost chokes as Regina pushes it onto her figure, highlighting both how much and how _little_ the swimsuit would potentially cover. 

Regina looks at her, teasingly seductive. Her voice comes out soft and low, making Cady’s head spin a little. It must be the exhaustion from walking around the mall so much. “You’re not supposed to swim in them, Cady. You’re supposed to serve looks with them.”

Cady stares, mind unwillingly drifting to what Regina would look like in a bathing suit. A beat passes and she realises it’s her cue to reply, but she’s clearly already missed it because Regina just rolls her eyes.

“Anyway, this looks good on me, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” Cady says. “Everything looks good on you, Regina.”

Regina hums thoughtfully, pulling out another matching set (a yellow bikini decorated with small cherries this time). She holds it up to Cady, closing one eye and inspecting it as though it were a particularly tricky math equation. 

Cady supposes that to Regina, it probably is. 

“This matches your skin tone. You want it?”

“I guess?” Cady says, not really looking too hard as the girl nods and hands her the hanger. Anything to make the shopping excursion pass by faster.

“Okay, it’s yours,” Regina says. “Hand it to Damian along with the rest of the things you chose and let’s pick out one more outfit for day three.”

“We already bought things for day two. Can’t I just reuse something I have at home for day three?”

Regina pauses as though contemplating her suggestion, dramatically mulling it over before sending her a sweet smile. “No.”

Four hours later, they’re finally at the check-out counter with enough outfits for three days. Regina also ended up purchasing the light blue bikini, and Damian had bought his own fair share of clothes (“It’s for the aesthetic, Caddy. The photos need to look _good_.”). Cady’s eyes widen at the price that pops up on the cash register and she mournfully pulls out her wallet to pay, but then a perfectly manicured hand holding a silver card enters her field of vision and swipes at the machine for her.

“I told you, it’s on us. Well, _me_ , really,” Regina says, inputting her security code in the little black box. “You really think I’d make you endure something you clearly don’t enjoy _then_ make you spend your own money for it?”

“Regina…” Cady starts, ready to go off about not needing her pity. She wasn’t destitute and she could pay for herself — her parents had even given her the extra allowance when she said she was going out for the first time since summer began, their eyes brimming with relief and concern she just didn’t want, didn’t need. She was _fine_. 

“Don’t think this is a pity party for being dumped by Aaron,” Regina interrupts, stealing the words straight out of her mouth. “Cady, you’re, like, my friend or whatever. I know it sucks and that you’ve been sad about it, and there’s nothing I can do about that, but if I can make things easier until you can get over it, then I will. God knows it took me forever to get over…” she trails off, letting out a soft sigh before continuing. “Well, whatever. This isn’t pity, I know you don’t want it.”

“Then what is it?”

“Call it kindness,” Regina says, taking the bag from the cashier and handing it to Cady slightly more aggressively than a regular person would. Some things never change. “I’ve been trying to do more of that recently, if you haven’t noticed for the past year or so.”

“Okay,” Cady says. Regina starts walking out of the shop and she trails behind, heading to the Dairy Queen where Karen, Gretchen, and Damian had been waiting at while they paid. 

“You’re a good friend, Regina,” Cady says softly, a small warmth spreading throughout her chest as the blonde struts in front of her. It’s been a year since the incident with the Kalteen bars and the Burn Book, but she still feels just as guilty for it as if it happened yesterday, much more so with how nice Regina had been to her since then.

How nice she was being to her now, even when she was mourning the loss of the very boy that could have been credited to starting it all in the first place. _Don’t apologise,_ Regina had said then. She suspects that if she tried now, she’d hear the same spiel again, albeit without the dazed look that the pain medication gave.

“You deserve the kindness, Cady,” Regina says a moment later. 

It makes Cady smile.

**END OF PART 1**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter two! as always, kudos and comments are highly appreciated. enjoy the trip!

Two weeks later, Cady finds herself in the back of Gretchen’s van heading to the Wieners’ summer home at a beach near Lake Michigan. She’s seated beside Karen in the second row while Janis and Damian occupy the third. Gretchen is driving and Regina is seated shotgun. It’s only 7PM and the six of them have already descended into madness, trying to decide who gets the aux cord for the first half of the 4-hour drive.

In the end, Regina comes out the winner and nobody is really surprised. She flashes a sweet smile her way and Cady’s already given in. A single glare to Karen and Gretchen shuts them up like it’s Junior Year again. 

Her femme fatale act doesn’t quite sell to either Janis or Damian, but she argues that she’s the one driving them for the next half of the trip and it’s only fair that she has a bigger right to the aux, being the navigator for the first half too. 

The two give in to logic and Regina gets to play Taylor Swift’s essentials for two hours.

Nobody really complains except for Janis who looks like she wants to die the moment ‘Everything Has Changed’ gets queued up. Damian hands her a pair of headphones that she graciously takes and, within seconds, Janis Sarkisian goes from grumpy and moody to asleep in the backseat.

A few minutes later, something called ‘You Belong With Me’ comes on and Damian gasps excitedly.

“I love this one!” Karen exclaims, reaching over the front seat to turn up the volume but accidentally switching the radio to FM instead. Gretchen patiently returns it to Aux 1 and turns it up for her. 

“You're on the phone with your girlfriend, she's upset! She's going off about something that you said!” her friends start singing along enthusiastically. Even Regina, who has been quiet apart from the occasional comment, is humming along now and Cady wonders what it is about this song that seems to get them riling.

“‘CAUSE SHE WEARS SHORT SKIRTS, I WEAR T-SHIRTS, SHE’S CHEER CAPTAIN AND I’M ON THE BLEACHERS!” Damian practically yells, loud enough for Janis to wake up with a groan. Cady watches as the girl assesses the scene around her and, upon realising what's going on, proceeds to yank her earphones off and sing along.

“Dreaming ‘bout the day when you wake up and find that what you’re — LOOKING FOR! HAS BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME!”

Cady laughs as the chorus rolls in and everyone breaks out into song. She wonders at her friends who seem to memorise ‘You Belong With Me’ better than the national anthem and as they reach the highway come the second verse and Gretchen picks up the speed, she feels a little sting in her chest, silently wishing that Aaron could have come along with them. She wonders what he’s doing now, whether he’s happy, whether he misses her too.

It’s almost like she can see him, smiling goofily beside her in the back of the van and trying to get her to sing along to a song she’s only heard once. She would lean against him and he’d smell like soap and that bubblegum hair gel he was so fond of using. He would wrap his arms around her, whisper a stupid joke into her ear, and make her laugh like it was his job to do so. 

She sighs, entertaining the thought for one second more before snapping back into reality where her friends have reached the bridge of the song.

“Oh, I remember you driving to my house in the middle of the night! I'm the one who makes you laugh when you know you're 'bout to cry! I know your favorite songs, and you tell me about your dreams...” 

Cady bobs her head to the rhythm and looks up to see Regina staring at her.

“Think I know where you belong, think I know it's with me,” Regina mouths playfully, sending a small wink her way.

Cady rolls her eyes and ignores the strange little thrill that strikes her chest like lightning. She’s heard enough of the song to figure out what comes next and joins her friends in belting out the last chorus, fumbling a little bit over the words, but grinning ear-to-ear nonetheless. By the time the song ends, however, Regina is still staring at her. 

Cady raises her eyebrows, ‘ _What?_ ’

Regina just smiles and turns away.

Two hours later, they stop-over at a rest area somewhere along the highway. By this time, everyone is pretty much zonked out. Janis and Damian are leaning against each other in the back, dead to the world save for the occasional snore. Karen has been preoccupied with her phone, trying to figure out how Candy Crush works, while Gretchen and Regina are talking in the front.

“So Caitlin calls Taylor a hoe and the teacher is just watching, shocked, ‘cos what 10-year old knows what a hoe is?”

“Takes one to know one,” Regina says nonchalantly, drawing out a laugh from Gretchen. Cady frowns in the backseat and leans over to the both of them.

“What happened to being nice?”

Regina stares at her for a moment, electric blue eyes seeming to crackle at the challenge. Maybe a year ago, Cady would have shrunk away and relented, would have grimaced and shut her mouth and let it go, but she’s no longer afraid of this girl before her. 

(It’s kind of difficult to muster fear for the very girl who walked up to her in a bathroom in Spring Fling and quipped about being blocked by the President on Twitter, who bought her a giant stuffed lion and popcorn and drinks at the peak of her heartbreak, who helped make her so fearless in the first place.)

Cady raises her eyebrows when another beat passes, and Gretchen is starting to squirm in the driver’s seat, but Regina reminds her that she has nothing to fear anyway when she rolls her eyes with a fond smile and murmurs an apology under her breath. Cady grins and leans back, watching as Gretchen slowly parks in the rest-stop. 

As they roll in, the van seems to come to life again. Karen looks up from her phone and loudly announces that she needs to go to the bathroom, Janis and Damian rouse and reach for their wallets, undoubtedly to buy food at the 7/11, and Regina gets out of the car to stretch.

Cady makes herself comfortable and closes her eyes to sleep for a moment when she feels a tap on her shoulder. The door is open and Gretchen is standing beside her, looking nervous. Her left hand taps a frantic rhythm against her thigh while her right is raised, clenched softly against her chest.

“Cady?”

“Mmm?”

Gretchen looks away. “Is it okay if we switch? I kinda wanna talk to Karen about something and I didn’t wanna ask Janis since Regina’s gonna be driving and it might be awkward, but if I ask Damian, he’s gonna hog the aux cord, and Regina doesn’t wanna listen to showtunes the whole way so I can only really ask you, but it’s okay if you say no! It’s just…”

“Gretchen,” Cady laughs, stopping her with a hand on her arm. “It’s fine. I don’t mind switching.”

“Okay, are you su—?” Gretchen blinks. “Okay, no, yeah. Okay. Thank you, Cady.”

It makes Cady smile wider. Ever since the events of Junior Year, she’s noticed that Gretchen has been trying harder and harder to be more assertive, to ask for what she wants and do things for herself, and while it’s been a slippery slope upwards, she’s still proud of the girl’s progress. She sees it when she holds her head every inch higher, with every ‘no’ she manages, and with every request she pushes for rather than shying away like before.

The little sigh of relief that Gretchen releases as they switch doesn’t go unnoticed by Cady, and she hops into the shotgun seat all the more enthusiastically.

A moment later, the driver’s side door swings open and Regina George is staring at her, assessing Cady’s new placement in the car. 

“You’re switching?” Regina says, glancing at Gretchen who is watching the exchange nervously from the back. “Okay.”

Janis and Damian return a second later, arms bearing gifts of chips, soda, and candy. Regina seems to pale a little at the sheer amount of junk food, but then Janis pulls out a plastic container filled with blueberries and wordlessly hands it to Regina before jumping back to her seat beside Damian. This gives Regina a pause and she seems to take some time to compose herself before starting up the engine and backing out.

Cady watches. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Regina says, eyebrows scrunched together and forming a little crease in between. Then, a little softer so that Janis can’t hear, she says, “Blueberries are my favourite.”

“Really?” Cady says, glancing at the container that now rests in the middle of the two of them, then back up at the girl who now seems a little smaller than before. “I didn’t know that.”

“Now you do,” she replies curtly, then proceeds to hand her cell phone to Cady. “Pick a song, Cady.”

Cady takes it and unlocks it with her fingerprint; she’s one of the few that Regina allows access to her phone with. Regina’s Spotify is filled with albums of so many different genres and Cady has to hold back a laugh at the sheer amount of Taylor Swift there is. 

In a way, she thinks as she eventually settles for one of the few playlists with songs she actually knows (“80’s Top Hits”), Regina’s a dork. She’s just way better at hiding it than others are.

‘The Longest Time’ by Billy Joel comes up and she’s surprised to see Regina mouthing the lyrics as the song plays. The backseat is filled with the murmuring (and occasional scream) of their other friends, but right here, right now, Cady is taken aback by the sheer incredulity of the moment. 

Here she is, she thinks, in a car with Regina George on the way to a beach near Lake Michigan. Regina’s hair is tied back and her blue, blue, blue eyes are fixed on the road before them, and she’s mouthing the words to a Billy Joel song.

It hits Cady just then how beautiful this girl is.

Regina starts actual singing once the chorus rolls in, and the corner of her lip is piqued up in a small smile. Her fingers are tapping a matching beat on the steering wheel. She’s barely got makeup on and she’s dressed in just a Northshore hoodie and tights, but here at night, lit up by only the road lights and looking one of the calmest she’s ever been, she’s beautiful.

_Who knows how much further we'll go on / Maybe I'll be sorry when you're gone / I'll take my chances, I forgot how nice romance is / I haven't been there for the longest time_

A small warmth fills Cady’s chest but she’s quick to quell it, tearing her eyes away from Regina and back on the highway that stretches out into a forever before them. The thought of Aaron and his gentle voice seems to feel further and further away, and she thinks that there’s something symbolic about feeling that as they too drive further and further away from Evanston, Illinois, away from the city that’s brought her too much heartache, and away from the boy whose smile she’s started to forget.

Her eyes close and, ever so slowly, she falls asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry my pacing is all over the place. as usual, any feedback is appreciated :)

It’s 11PM by the time they arrive at Gretchen’s beach house and Cady doesn’t notice until she feels a light pressure on her shoulder, rousing her from her sleep. She opens her eyes and sees Regina looking over at her with a strange expression on her face. Her eyes are incredibly soft and her brows are scrunched together and she’s mouthing something out to her, but in Cady’s newly-awakened state, she can’t quite understand. The hand stays rested on her shoulder and taps three beats.

It’s funny, she manages to think in her sleep delirium, how she’s been able to read the girl less and less these days. Regina George used to be an open book — cold, hard, Plastic, but the year has taught her that there is so much more to her than the evil queen bee that Cady had so readily pegged her for.

“What?” Cady says when Regina raises her eyebrows quizzically at her. Her voice comes out like a croak and she clears her throat and straightens up in her seat, grimacing. “What?”

“We’re here, Cady. Everyone’s already inside,” Regina says, a small laugh escaping her lips. “C’mon, let’s go. They brought our stuff in already, we’re just waiting to pick rooms.”

Cady blinks and unbuckles herself. She steps out of the van, suddenly aware of her surroundings. 

The ground beneath her is gravel and she can feel its softness even beneath her shoes. The air is cool and, when she breathes in, she realises it’s the freshest air she’s inhaled since she left Kenya two years ago. It smells like the ocean, she thinks, and that’s when the faint sound of waves coming from the east register in her head. 

Cady turns, but it’s too dark to see the beach, the crashing of water on the shore being the only indicator of it being there in the first place. The sound is calming and she feels a little lighter with every crash of the ocean kissing the land.

Finally, she looks up and the sight takes her breath away. Above her is the clearest night she’s seen in forever. The night sky is sprinkled with hundreds of thousands of stars.

Her chest tightens and she feels a longing for open air, and savannah, and the roars and croaks of the wildlife she grew up and fell in love with. It’s the closest to Kenya she’s felt in a while and she’s never quite realised how much of a home she left behind.

“Wow,” Regina says somewhere behind her and she can’t help but agree.

“I haven’t seen a sky like this in forever,” Cady says, her voice a little breathless. “It almost doesn’t feel real.”

“Reminds you of home?” Regina says, coming into her field of vision by stepping into a little spot by her right. “In Africa, I mean.”

“It almost seems like we had more of them there. The stars, I mean,” Cady laughs and spends one more moment soaking up the view before turning to fully face Regina. 

“It must have been really nice.”

Her neck is craned up, looking at the sky, and she seems to be deep in thought, but when Cady turns to her, she breaks out of it, shooting Cady a quick smile and motioning to the beach house she’s only begun to notice.

Even in the night, Cady can tell that Gretchen’s beach house is _Huge_ with a capital ‘H’. It’s three stories high, with the ground floor being an open space. In the dark, she can make out a pool, a billiards table, and a few couches at the open-air ground floor. The second and third floors are lit up, indicating their friends’ presence in the house.

Regina leads the way forward and Cady, as usual, follows, her footsteps making soft _pat-pat-pats_ on the ground as she trails behind the blonde.

“God, I’m exhausted,” Regina says, tossing her handbag onto her bed. 

Cady ends up rooming with Regina in one of the bedrooms on the second floor. Their room was parallel to Karen and Gretchen’s, connected only by a shared bathroom. Janis and Damian had unsurprisingly paired together on the third floor. 

The established pairs rooming together left Cady with Regina, which should have been awkward considering they weren’t exactly ‘best friends’ like the other four were with one another, but neither of them really minded. Cady watches as Regina disappears into the bathroom, holding clothes and toiletries to get ready for bed. 

She uses the time alone to survey their room for the next few days.

In between the two beds, placed opposite each other in the room, lies a side-table with a small lamp, and a window which supposedly overlooked the beach (not that Cady could see in the darkness, but she could still hear the waves even from inside the house). There are two wooden closets in one corner of the room and, apart from a medium-sized painting of a fruit basket decorating the wall closest to Cady’s bed, the room is pretty bare. The walls are baby-blue and there’s a circular light that washes the room in warm white, making it sleepy-looking in the evening. 

Some of Regina’s things are already scattered around the room — a wooden hairbrush, her cellphone, and the hoodie she wore on the way here — but her stuff, for the most part, are still in her hot-pink trolley. It’s 11:30PM and she supposes that Regina is too tired to unpack the rest of her things tonight. Cady sympathises with this, placing her duffel bag in front of her bed to unpack tomorrow. 

The agenda for the next day was simple, it was beach day. They’d leave at around 8AM and come back when it got too hot. Damian was in charge of making burgers for lunch and they’d head to town until 4PM. Then they could go back to the beach until sunset and then back to the beach house for the night.

Regina’s alarm is set for 6AM, and after the 4-hour car ride, Cady would much rather sleep in, but she supposes that years of adventure-filled days and jam-packed agendas in Kenya should have prepared her sufficiently enough for this. She leans back on her bed and tries to get herself psyched up for the next day, but there’s that ache in her chest again and, _god_ , she wishes Aaron were here so they could at least enjoy it together.

Just as Cady begins to wallow, the bathroom door opens and Regina steps in, dressed in a white school t-shirt and pink, cotton shorts. Her hair is up in a bun and whatever make-up she had on is now washed off. Cady finds herself staring, slightly shocked by the casualness of it all. 

She’s never seen Regina George look quite so...normal.

“Karen and Gretch are done, so you can use the bathroom now,” Regina says, facing her, and Cady’s jaw nearly drops because, by god, she’s wearing _retainers_. Some of her surprise must show on her face though because Regina’s brows furrow and her mouth forms a little frown. “What?”

“Sorry, I just…” Cady tries to compose herself, tries to form a coherent sentence, but the words just spill out. “I don’t think it’s fair that you still look so pretty like this.”

“I—” Regina looks like she’s at a loss and Cady wants to punch herself in the face. 

It’s not that she _didn’t_ mean it, but her mouth was clearly a step ahead of her mind because the thought was out before she could even think it, and if she had just _thought_ about it before saying it, maybe she would’ve said something _normal_ instead.

“I mean!” Cady says, throwing her hands up. “Sorry, that’s awkward. It’s just — I’ve never really seen you without the makeup and, uh, flowing hair, and designer clothes and…”

“These shorts are Gucci,” Regina says, under her breath, but she’s smiling so Cady laughs, albeit a little hysterically in an effort to make the awkwardness dissipate. Regina, of course, accomplishes this so much better, and just smirks, effectively silencing Cady. She quickly places herself on her bed, pulling up her cellphone and ending their little conversation.

The brief reprieve gives Cady some time to process her words and, looking at Regina all long legs, bright blue eyes, and soft smiles, she realises there’s definitely truth to it. 

Regina looks _really_ pretty, even in full home-clothes and _retainers_ (she really can’t get over it). It’s a stark reminder that Regina George really is a _human person_ , and there’s something about that concept that Cady can admit to being a _little_ obsessed about.

Her stomach turns over a little and she quickly squashes the feeling down, the same one that had been pestering her since the car ride. 

Regina was pretty, but Cady didn’t like her like that.

(Okay, so she _might_ be a little attracted to Regina, but who wouldn’t be? It’s not like it was anything serious like a crush. Hell, she hasn’t even gotten over Aaron yet, and the implications of actually liking Regina could lead to an incalculable amount of consequences she wasn’t ready to deal with.)

After all they’d been through together, it just wouldn’t work out...not that she really needed to stray that far. She catches herself mid-thought and tries to steer herself back into reality. 

This has always been her problem, she thinks — thinking too far ahead when it came to things like attraction and love.

 _Simplify_ , Cady thinks to herself, forcing herself to stand and grab some pyjamas from her bag. She finds her toothbrush, a towel, and some facial wash, then walks towards the bathroom. Regina is still fixated on her phone, squinting at it every so often as though she were deep in thought, but Cady tries not to look her way in light of her recent epiphany.

 _Simplify._

Almost robotically, she changes into her pyjamas, washes her face, and brushes her teeth. She leaves her yellow toothbrush in a small glass where 3 other toothbrushes, red, green, and blue, are already placed, and hangs her white towel on the empty rack.

When Cady steps back in the room, Regina’s bent over the bed and switching the lamp on the side-desk on, phone forgotten. 

“Cady, could you please turn the light off?” she says. 

Cady complies. When she switches the room-light off, it leaves only the low-powered lamp on, and the room looks almost grey in the dim lighting now. Regina relaxes in her bed and pulls the white blanket over her. Cady, on the parallel side of the room, does the same.

“Sleep time?” Cady says, and she cringes a little because it’s kind of a dorky thing to say, but Regina doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she just nods and switches the lamp off for the both of them, leaving the room in nearly total darkness save for the little moonlight that sneaks in from the window in-between their beds.

Cady shuts her eyes, determined to get as much sleep as she can before Regina’s 6AM alarm goes off, and she very nearly drifts into unconsciousness before Regina’s voice filters in from the other side of the room.

“Cady?”

“Mmm?” she says, shifting a little to the side.

“Thanks — for the compliment, I mean.”

Cady’s thankful that the lights are off because she feels her cheeks heat up at the recollection of her word vomit. 

_Simplify._

“Uhh...yeah. I mean, it’s true. You’re, like, really pretty.”

A small buzzer goes off in her head, not unlike the ones that signified a wrong answer in her Mathletic competitions. She hears Regina laugh a little from her side of the room, and Cady’s stomach does an annoying little backflip.

“I agree. I think you are too. Goodnight, Cady.”

 _Simplify_ , she thinks, one last time before she says any more stupid things. “‘Night.”


	4. Chapter 4

Regina’s alarm is a freaking rooster.

It’s a rooster crowing and it  _ won’t stop _ , and Cady has never felt such violent urges towards an animal before. She groans and shifts so that she’s facing away from the noise, then throws a pillow on the side of her head to block out  _ kukaroo-karoo _ that’s been on repeat for the past minute. She wants to scream, kick the source of the sound into oblivion, then run it over with a bus for good measure, but before she can do any of these things, the alarm stops and is replaced by blissful silence.

Well,  _ almost _ silence. She can hear Regina fumbling around somewhere behind her, and she should honestly get up too, but she’s never really been a morning person and this is supposed to be a vacation, so she doesn’t. Instead, she falls back asleep.

She wakes up an hour later to a soft voice and a gentle hand on her shoulder. The sun is so much brighter now and she raises her hand to her eyes, both to rub them awake and to block out the glare.

“Cady, get up,” Regina says, voice uncharacteristically quiet. 

Cady doesn’t want to. She wants to sink into the mattress, melt into her pillow, maybe pull Regina in with her if she sought a death wish, but only because her hand was so comfortingly warm. She wants to hang on to her dreams and her slumber and spend the next few hours unconscious.

Instead, she groans and pushes herself away from the bed. It’s a Herculean effort, but she somehow manages to sit up. 

When she opens her eyes, Regina is looking down at her with some form of amusement painting her face. Gone is the messy bun and bare skin from the night before; the Regina George she sees, decked in a flowy white dress and precisely applied makeup, is perfectly primed for the beach day ahead.

“What time is it?” Cady asks, frowning at the foul taste in her mouth. For a minute, she gets concerned about Regina having to deal with her morning breath, but the other girl is already standing a couple feet away, fixing something on her own bed.

“Don’t worry, it’s still 7 so you have about an hour,” Regina says, not looking at her. “Karen said she’s making breakfast but...in case things go to shit, which I assure you, they will, we’ve got bagels.”

Cady laughs a little at the thought of Karen making breakfast and tries to calculate the possibility of the house spontaneously combusting within the next half hour. 

Chances were astonishingly high. 

“Okay, I’ll get ready then.”

“Don’t forget, wear the bikini but under the sundress for now. You can take it off later,” Regina notes before leaving the room with a little wave. “See ya.”

Cady rolls over, valiantly fighting off the temptation to sleep by pushing herself off the bed and into an upright position. She shuffles over to her bag that still lies on the floor and pulls out the yellow sundress and the cherry bikini that Regina picked out for her. 

Come to think of it, she’s never actually worn one of these things so she’s not quite sure how it works, but Cady is confident she’ll figure it out.

She proves herself wrong 10 minutes later when she’s stuck in the bathroom, frustratedly trying to tie the bra part together. There’s no hook like she expected, only a tangled assortment of strings and clips, and she can’t, for the life of her, understand where anything is supposed to be. One last frustrated attempt leaves the bra a little too high on her chest, threateningly exposing  _ way  _ more skin than she’s comfortable with, and it is at this point that she gives up and texts Regina an ‘SOS’.

Regina knocks on the door a moment later and Cady opens it then peeps her head out. “Oh, thank god, I can’t figure out how to put the bra part on. Could you help me? Please?”

Regina laughs, eyes shifting to the side and brows furrowing. “What, you’ve never worn a bra that wasn’t clip-on, Cady? Do you live off sports bras alone?”

“Shut up,” Cady says, face heating up, but she opens up the door a little wider so Regina can come in. Once Regina closes the door behind her, Cady turns away, back facing Regina. 

Nothing can prepare her for the lightning that shoots up her spine the minute Regina’s hands make contact with her bare skin.

Expertly, the girl begins untying the knots that Cady somehow managed to make, leaving the bra a little looser than before. With every second that the cloth unfurls, Cady’s panic increases. She prays to whatever god is listening that Regina can’t hear her heart racing —  _ it’s basically a samba in her chest _ — and tries hard not to focus on the few moments that Regina’s hands touch the small of her back, the nape of her neck, the curve of her shoulder blades.

“You can breathe, you know,” Regina says, and it’s only then that Cady notices she’s been holding her breath the whole time. “I’m not gonna stab you or whatever.”

“Yeah?” Cady manages. Her voice comes out a little breathless.

“Yeah,” Regina says, knotting the bra securely in place. “Done.”

“Thanks,” Cady says, turning around. The air feels like it’s settling, so she strikes a pose, hands akimbo and legs wide. She forces a sultry look, narrowing her eyes and puckering her lips up. “What do you think? Hot enough for the boys?”

Regina thankfully laughs at her antics, giving Cady a quick once-over that makes her heart do a little backflip in her chest.

Regina winks, “And the girls too.”

Cady laughs a little too loud and simultaneously cringes inside.  _ God,  _ what was wrong with her? One moment she’s sad about Aaron, and then the next she’s reliving feelings from 11th Grade AP Calculus with somebody new — with  _ Regina George. _

Damian would call this a ‘rebound’, but as Regina leaves the bathroom, leaving her alone with a yellow sundress and a smile, she wonders if maybe it’s been like this for longer than she can remember. 

Luckily, the sundress is much simpler than the bikini. She puts it on quickly and exits the bathroom, ready to join the rest of her friends in eating the bagels they’ll surely be resorting to.

Surprisingly, Karen whips up a pretty decent breakfast. 

Given, it’s just pancakes and scrambled eggs, but Karen is an unpredictable force of nature and Cady’s still not so sure how she managed it.

The six of them sit in a round table in the dining room, which is really just the common area on the second floor. Cady looks around in awe at the sight. 

To her left is Janis who’s picking at her food unenthusiastically, while Damian scarfs his down beside her. He’s rambling about beach activities like snorkeling and the ‘banana boat’ while Janis gives a nod every now and then to show she’s listening. They’re dressed in matching outfits — a white t-shirt and tropical swim trunks — and Cady holds back a laugh because it was so obviously only Damian’s coercion that could have convinced Janis to have worn anything  _ neon _ with  _ flowers _ .

To her right is Regina, daintily cutting up pancakes that are drizzled with maple syrup in the shape of a bumblebee. Janis had done syrup art for everyone — an excruciatingly detailed outline of New York for Damian, a cat for Gretchen with a matching mouse for Karen, a crown for Cady, and an alien for herself. 

(Regina had frowned at that one, but Janis had shrugged it off with a good-mannered grin and an awkward pat on the shoulder.)

“So, why a bee?” Cady whispers to Regina during a lull in the conversation. She’d been previously preoccupied by an argument with Gretchen and Damian about whether or not tennis skirts  _ really _ matched with t-shirts. Cady didn’t have much input on the matter and Janis was busy trying to flick a piece of pancake into Karen’s hair, so she’s grateful for the chance to talk. “ _ Queen _ bee? That’s corny.”

“Oh,  _ nah _ ,” Regina scoffs. She leans a little closer so only Cady can hear and Cady doesn’t try to lie to herself and say that it doesn’t make her stomach do a little flip. “I mean, I trust  _ you _ , but don’t tell anyone ‘cos it’s  _ so _ embarrassing.”

Cady nods, hopefully not  _ too  _ eagerly.

"So, like, I used to be deathly scared of bees after one stung me when I was 8. Janis was there since we were, uh, best friends, right? So she,” Regina laughs a little, low and breathy and kind of sad. “She hit a beehive with a stick as revenge. I mean, stupidest idea  _ ever _ and save the bees and all that, but at the time, it was — it was really sweet. A swarm ended up chasing us and stinging both of us  _ everywhere, _ but it was still really cool of her, so I couldn’t be mad.”

Cady looks over to Janis who’s abandoned her mission to pancake-zooka Karen’s hair and is now leaning on Damian, eyes closed and mumbling something about pushing him off a kayak while he laughs and plays with some loose string on her t-shirt. 

Regina’s account is definitely a story she can believe. Despite being tough and sharp and biting, Janis is something of an enigma to her — like crocodile meat! Difficult to acquire and get used to, but ultimately filling and giving and...nutritious?

(Well, she’s never been particularly good at metaphors.)

Fact of the matter is, Janis gives her whole heart to any of those brave few who dare approach her. Cady thinks of the paintings she’s made for her friends, the little trinkets, tentative comforting embraces, and all the things that come with being a part of Janis’ life. She thinks of a smaller version of the girl, fending off a beehive, a beast much more powerful and much more intimidating than she, for a friend who was hurt by a mere pawn of the kingdom.

Cady wonders how Regina could have ever let her go, but realises with a start that she had done so just as easily only a year ago, and for what? To fit in? To belong? 

She quickly shakes the thoughts away. They’ve mutually agreed to forgive and forget it, and the road to reconciliation had been long and tearful so it would be best, she thinks, to let it go.

“Well, that’s Janis for you.”

Regina’s smile widens and her eyes seem to mist over for a moment, lost in the memories of another time, but she comes back a second later. Her tongue peeks out between her teeth and she winks. “Yeah, but don’t tell her I think she's cool, ‘cos then I’ll have to burn your house down.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

They end up leaving at around 8:30am due to some mishaps with Gretchen dropping a plate and Karen attempting to pick up the debris with her bare hands. She ends up getting a small cut on her palm and Janis has to patch her up, disinfecting it and wrapping some cloth around the wound before it can start staining the floor. 

Cady lingers inside the house for a while, watching Janis tenderly wrap Karen’s cut hand while Gretchen watches, apologising every few seconds even though it really isn’t her fault. Regina steps out after a while, and Cady follows, figuring she’s pretty much doing nothing anyway. 

She finds Regina on the first floor, sliding the back of her hand down the counter of the pool table. She looks up when Cady stumbles out the door, tripping over a slipper on the way out and Cady feels her cheeks burn in embarrassment.

“Well, Karen didn’t burn the house down but now we’re here,” Regina remarks, a charming smile tugging at the side of her mouth at Cady’s klutziness. “You play any pool?”

“My dad tried to teach me, but no,” Cady says.

“Huh. I’ll teach you later, then.”

“I’ll hold you to it.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was a fun one! sorry i forgot to update yesterday, i'm swamped with schoolwork, but here it is!

For the time of the year, the beach is oddly empty. 

Granted, a large part of it could be credited to Gretchen’s family literally  _ owning _ the beach. The girl seems unsurprised by the lack of tourists and Cady figures that the beach is probably reserved for  _ them _ for the weekend and that this was probably the Wiener family’s norm.

(Oh, the wonders of the rich.)

The lifeguards still occupy their posts and all the activities are open, all without the hassle of screaming kids and long lines. A few vendors wander around the beach selling trinkets and drinks, but they lack the seedy look that often hides behind the stares of the beach merchants Cady’s expecting.

She turns towards the ocean and starts making her way to it, excited to finally understand the hype of it all, but she’s barely stepped into the surf before a hand grasps her own and pulls her deeper into the ocean. 

“What the—!“

Cady screams as she’s dragged forward by a mess of black hair and a hysterical laugh. Her legs support the sudden, accelerating force forward and she’s thankful that the few survival instincts she had picked up in Kenya still seem to be in place.

Before she knows it, she’s chest-deep in the ocean with Janis — Janis who is facing her with what can only be described as a shit-eating grin on her face. “Hey, Caddy.”

“What the heck?” she says, too dumbfounded to be mad. The ocean is a cool relief against the late-morning sun, but the speed at which she was forced into it was still a little disorienting. “Janis,  _ what _ ?”

“Sorry ‘bout that, I just needed to talk to you.”

“You needed to pull me into the  _ ocean _ to do that?”

“Uh, yeah,  _ duh _ ,” Janis says, rolling her eyes like Cady just said something stupid. It astounds her just how much it reminds her of Regina. 

Despite their friends still standing quite far away, still on-shore and staring at the both of them confusedly, Janis’ voice lowers down to a whisper. “Dude, I just gotta warn you, the minute your dress came off, she could  _ not _ keep it together.”

“What are you talking about?” Cady says.

“Huh? Oh...you just really don’t know, huh?”

“I — what?” a nervous laugh bubbles in her chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So you’re  _ not _ doing it on purpose?”

“Doing  _ what _ on purpose?”

Janis’ jaw drops and she’s staring at her incredulously as if  _ she _ had the right to be astounded at what was happening. “Dude.  _ Dude.  _ That’s — that’s rich. That’s hilarious, really.”

Janis is shaking her head now and pulling her further into the ocean. It’s come to the point that Cady’s tiptoeing a little so the water doesn’t mess up her hair. 

She turns her head around towards where their friends are and notes that Damian is swimming over to them.

Regina, Gretchen, and Karen are still sitting by the sea, talking, but Regina keeps shooting looks towards her direction, brows furrowed and nose crinkled like she just tasted something sour.

“Caddy, just...try to be a little less dense, okay? You’re…” Janis laughs a little, all too amused and pulling Cady’s attention towards her. “There’s something going on that you might want to be a  _ little _ more aware about.”

The crypticness of their exchange is starting to tick Cady off a little and she can feel a small frown growing on her face. “Literally  _ what _ is going on.”

“Swim back, Cads,” Janis says, rolling her eyes again. “We’ll talk if you figure it out.”

Cady figures she should grill Janis a little more, still completely lost as to what the girl was referring to, but just as she opens her mouth to speak, Damian’s head pops up beside her, making her jump (swim?) a little in the other direction.

“What’s going on here? We planning some more Plastic sabotage?”

“Ha-ha,  _ funny _ ,” Janis deadpans. “Nah, I was just trying to talk to Cady about the  _ thing _ , but turns out she’s got no idea.”

“What? Oh, honey, I thought she was doing it on purpose!”

“Dude, she knows  _ nothing _ .”

“I’m literally right here!” Cady says, a little fed up.

“Sis, if you really don’t know, then I don’t think either of us have the right to tell you,” Damian says, raising his hand to rest on Cady’s shoulder in a show of camaraderie. “You’ll figure it out eventually though, promise.”

“Or she’ll stay oblivious.”

“Have faith in our Math nerd!” Damian cries, giving Cady a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. Surprisingly, it makes her feel a little better about being completely out of the loop. “And what the hell, Janis! You can’t just drag Cady into the ocean before we’ve taken any pictures! Think of her hair!”

Before she can stop it, a laugh escapes her. Damian meets her eye and winks while Janis throws a good-natured smile her way. “C’mon, Damian. You know Cady’s appeal isn’t her hair anyway.”

“You’re right! It’s her eyes!”

“Or her smile?”

“Or maybe that ‘exotic cute’ aura?”

It’s clear that Cady’s going to get little else out of this exchange, and she chooses instead to let it go — albeit with confusion still clouding her mind as Janis and Damian go on to list the rest of her ‘undoubtedly numerous’ redeemable traits.

“Whatever, guys,” she says, starting to wade back to shore. “I’m heading back.”

Janis shrugs and swims closer to Damian, saying something about stuffed animals and swimsuits. Cady doesn’t bother listening to the rest of the exchange, instead running through the conversation in her head.

_ What was Janis on? Who couldn’t keep it together? What was she missing?  _

She hops to shore and meets the former Plastics who have apparently taken to building a sandcastle.

Well,  _ Gretchen _ is building a sandcastle. Karen is digging into the sand in front of it, making some sort of ‘moat’ where the water pools. Regina is tracing lazy circles beside the moat, small figures that get washed away every time the ocean washes upon the sand. 

When Cady comes up to meet them, Karen throws her a little wave and Gretchen pats the little space beside her to sit. Regina continues to mark the sand, almost determinedly not looking up at her.

It doesn’t bother her too much, though, Cady instead being a little more excited at the prospect of building the sandcastle. 

“I’d build these huge ones with the kids in Kenya, before,” she starts, taking the space beside Gretchen. “It’s like math, but practical. If you have  _ just _ the right ratio of sand and water and make your structures just the right width and length, you could go on forever and build sandcastles stories-high.”

“Whoa, like a sand-skyscraper,” Karen murmurs, looking up at Cady with wide-eyes. “It’s like snow, but hot and yellow.”

“I guess?” Cady says, and she hears Regina chuckle. It pushes a smile on her face and she almost forgets the weird warning Janis had left her a few moments ago —  _ there’s something going on that you might want to be a  _ little _ more aware about _ . 

She shakes the thought away, bringing her hands to the warm sand and packing it between her fingers. “Here, let’s see if I still remember how to make it just right…”

It’s noon by the time they decide the sun is too hot to bear. Cady’s working through a sunburn on her nose and Janis, not used to the direct exposure to sunlight, is going through it with reddened arms and legs.

“You look like a goth lobster,” Karen says delightedly when Damian and Janis come to join them.

Under Cady’s supervision, the ex-Plastics set out to building a majestic sandcastle. Currently, it stands at half her height with sharp spires and semi-intricate patterns along the sides, decorated with shells and rocks that Karen had collected around the coastline. She’d have gone on if it weren’t for the tide getting higher and higher every passing hour.

Regina makes a valiant attempt at a moat to shield their creation from the rising waves, but it ends up being fruitless and Cady just laughs about it, even when the castle is reduced to half its height by a particularly strong comber.

Regina pouts. “I wanted to save it. It was nice.”

“We can always make a new one. It was bound to happen anyway,” Cady says. “Sandcastles aren’t meant to last forever.”

“Besides, we took loooots of pictures!” Gretchen chimes in, already posting a few onto her Instagram story. “I’d say this deserves a  _ sand _ -ing ovation?”

Cady laughs while everyone else groans. “For our out- _ sand _ ing effort?”

“I  _ sand _ we should go back to the house!” Karen tries and Janis gives her a high-five. 

“I second the motion,” Damian says, solemnly. “We need to get some vinegar on my delicate girl’s sunburns  _ stat. _ ”

That comment earns a slap instead.

Damian makes the group burgers and fries to go with them. He’s a pretty decent cook and he credits the recipe to his nana who taught him everything he knew — except for, maybe, the entire instruction process.  _ That _ came from Google. 

Gretchen helps by mixing up a funky iced tea that Cady is only 45% sure is spiked while Karen watches dutifully beside her.

To her surprise, Janis and Regina end up hanging outside on the balcony and talking. Regina is applying some aloe vera cream she brought on Janis’ arms and they’re, like,  _ really _ talking — without any teeth-baring, horn-pulling extravaganza going on. 

Janis must have snuck in a joke somewhere in their conversation because Regina starts laughing, loud enough that Cady can hear it from behind the glass window. It makes her smile and she gets so lost in the sound that she doesn’t notice Damian sneak up beside her.

“You got it bad, huh?”

“What?” Cady jumps, feeling her cheeks heat up. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t act dumb with me, sweetie. You know that only works with straight men,” Damian says. “You’ve got a thing for little miss perfect here, don’t you?”

“No! I mean — kind of? I mean—” Cady groans. “How did you know?”

“You’re kind of obvious,” he says. “I mean, the longing looks...the puppy-dog eyes...the yearning smiles...that’s lesbian activity right there!” Damian sets himself down beside her on the couch. “And here I thought you were a straighty.”

“I’m...” she trails off. “Whatever! Just keep your voice down!”

“Surprised she’ll hear you from across the room? Behind the glass door? Girl,  _ please _ . Janis is the loudest person I know and I can’t hear  _ any _ of what she’s saying,” Damian laughs. “And trust me, I’ve been trying to for the past hour. I’ve been wondering when the blood would start shedding, actually.”

“Don’t even joke about it!” Cady says, but she’s already smiling. She turns her head towards the pair again, heart softening at the visual of Regina George holding  _ Janis Sarkisian _ ’s arm and grinning. It’s like if she blinked, she could see a miniature version of the two, young and bold and completely untainted from the hell of hormones and puberty. “But it’s pretty cute, right? That they’re getting along?”

“Not jealous?”

“What?! Of course no—ugh,  _ Damian _ .  _ Please _ ,” she whines, heat spreading through her face again. “It’s not even a big deal. I just figured it out yesterday and it probably isn’t serious.”

“Cady Heron with a crush that  _ isn’t _ serious?”

“ _ Really _ . It’s just a temporary thing. I’ll get over it by, like, tomorrow or something,” she takes a sip from her iced tea. “Anyway, if she runs away like Chiumbo from Kenya, I’m pretty sure I can run faster this time — ow! Hey!”

She quickly rubs the part of her head that Damian flicked. “That hurt!”

“You deserved that one,” Damian says, tongue in cheek. His eyes flick upwards and his grin widens. “Besides, I better go. See ya, Caddy!”

She watches him flee, sidling up to join Karen and Gretchen in what looks like an  _ extremely _ juicy gossip session. Before she can chase after him, she’s stopped by a presence in front of her.

Well,  _ two _ presences to be exact.

“Is he bothering you?” a familiar voice drifts from above. Cady looks up to find Janis towering over her, one arm holding a green, translucent bottle of what she guesses is aloe vera, the other arm slung around Regina’s shoulders. “‘Cos if he is, I want in.”

“Janis!” Regina laughs, shoving her a little. As if things could get any weirder, she wraps her free arm around Janis’ waist, her smile widening. “Anyway, Cady...Janis and I were talking, and you know how you told me earlier that you don’t know how to play pool? Well—“

“ _ I  _ happen to be an expert in the game myself and I’d be more than willing to teach you with my assistant, Regina.”

“Don’t believe her; she’s good but she could never beat me.”

“I did  _ thrice _ !”

“I let you,” Regina huffs, promptly letting go of the girl. “Anyway, we’ve decided, what better way for you to learn than from the two best pool players at Northshore? Granted, Janis hasn’t played against me in years, so it’s probably just me now.”

“This is weird,” Cady says out loud, and it’s only then that she notices the slight buzz in the air between Janis and Regina, the almost unnoticeable tension in their stances, the way they smile, the edge in their voices. Whatever is going on, she suspects it has something to do with healing...and she’s somehow found herself in the middle of it.

It doesn’t really bother her as much as it should.

“But I’m game for it! Let’s go!”

**END OF PART 5.**


	6. Chapter 6

“Regina, I—I can’t do this,” Cady whispers under her breath. Her hands tremble and she feels the sweat beading up behind her neck. Her arms are tired and she’s _so close_ to just losing it already. 

Regina’s body is pressed against hers and she breathes into her ear. “Cady, I promise, you _can_. You just need to relax.”

“I’m not used to it, I’ve never—it’s never been like this,” she groans, flexing her shoulders and her fingers. They twitch involuntarily at the unfamiliar motions she’s been subjecting them to for the past half-hour, and she’s beginning to feel a little dizzy with the pressure building up inside her. “I’m not good enough.”

“You are, Cady,” Regina murmurs, soft and sweet and all so enticing. Her fingers suddenly tangle with her own, gently pulling off the tension, and Cady’s face flushes all the more. “You just need to let go.”

“Agh!” Cady cries, pushing her right arm forward to whack the white ball towards her desired target. Instead, her cue stick digs another hole into the green billiards table and she feels the disappointment well up inside her for the nth time today. 

“I suck at this.”

Regina pulls away from her and her mind clears up a little bit. “Hm. Yeah, you kinda do.”

Cady frowns and Regina instantly perks up. “I mean...it isn’t a bad thing, though? Some people just...aren’t good at some things?”

“You’re pretty good at everything,” Cady says, though she must say it a _little_ too endearingly because Regina flushes. “I mean sports, makeup, fashion, _pool_ . Is there anything that you _can’t_ do?”

“Release feelings constructively?” Janis suggests somewhere behind them. “In a way that doesn’t hurt anyone or result in ruining their lives?”

“Hey!” Regina says, brows scrunching as she whips her head around to face Janis. A beat, and Janis is just grinning like...a goth, feral tomcat. Regina challenges the expression with a grimace and a glare before finally relenting. “Yeah, okay, I guess I’m pretty bad at doing that.”

“Gotcha,” Janis says, pointing a finger gun her way. 

Regina rolls her eyes and feigns being shot. “You’re pretty good at it too, if I remember right.”

“Oh-kay,” Cady says, breaking it up with a little wave of her hand. “ _Anyway,_ I guess we’ve pretty much established I’m bad at this, so I’m gonna head upstairs before I have to get any more lessons that’ll undoubtedly end in some form of drastic failure, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Regina says, smiling at her in a way that she’d almost consider fond. She looks at the pool table for a moment, then at Janis, then back to Cady with something different in her eyes — something expectant? A moment passes before she merely sighs and says, “I’ll come up with you.”

Cady nods and they’re about halfway to the door before Janis calls out.

“Regina!”

Regina turns and there’s Janis, half grin plastered on her face. Her hands are placed coolly on the table as she leans backwards, shifting her weight onto it. It’s a pretty relaxed pose, but Cady doesn’t fail to notice the nervousness that’s shining through her eyes.

“C’mon, you didn’t waste half an hour on that lesson to just _not_ play me?” Janis laughs.

“...huh?” Regina says, and Cady notices the hesitation in the slight tremble of her lip, the almost-missable crease in her forehead. It’s easy to read Regina when she’s around Janis, Cady’s noticed. She’s a lot more open, a lot more vulnerable, and from what she can tell, a lot more scared than she’s ever really seen the girl before.

“Yeah, dude. I’ve been playing with the drama kids for the past 10 years, so who knows? Maybe it’s you who’s out of practice.”

“No way.”

“Then play a round of 8-ball with me.”

Regina takes a step forward. “Yeah...okay. One round.”

The smile on Cady’s face is nothing short of genuine when she heads to the door, leaving the two alone to catch up on what is, no doubt, years of emotional repression. Regina’s smile is all kinds of soft and sad and relieved all at once, and it always thrills her to see the human behind the metaphorical hairspray.

Regina is happy, and Cady finds herself unsurprised that this makes her pretty dang happy too.

Cady takes a nap and wakes up three hours later to a soft hand squeezing her bare shoulder.

“Cady, wake up. We’re going back to the beach,” Regina’s voice filters in from somewhere to her right, and she decides this is a much better way to wake up than the cursed crows of the digital rooster.

“Mmm,” she drawls out, turning her head and opening her eyes every so slightly. Regina’s in her bikini top and a pair of denim shorts, her hair tied back in a ponytail albeit for a few wisps of hair styled carefully around her face. Effortlessly beautiful — as always. “What time is it?”

“4:30. If we don’t hurry up, we’ll miss the sunset and Gretch wants to take as many golden hour pics as possible, so you better get out of bed,” Regina’s brows scrunch up and Cady wills herself to sit up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“Okay, okay,” she laughs, but Regina’s already out the door. Cady slides out of the sundress and puts on some shorts, mirroring Regina’s outfit perfectly. When she steps out of their room, the rest of the gang is already gathered in the common area. Janis has got her Polaroid hanging around her neck and she’s discussing something about candids with Gretchen.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” Regina smirks and Cady’s heart skips a beat. “I was thinking you’d end up going back to sleep the minute I left the room.”

“With everyone waiting for me? Never,” Cady says. “I can’t let my friends down.”

“You’re right. Cady Heron could never,” Regina says.

“Jesus, get a room,” Damian groans, and Cady blushes. Regina looks unfazed, but by the way her nose crinkles and the way she glowers a little at Damian, they can tell that the comment does not impress her.

No more words are exchanged before they start walking towards the beachfront, Regina leading the way and Cady trailing bashfully behind.

When they get back to the beach, the sun has already begun to set, its edges brushing the edge of the ocean. Gretchen insists they take a group picture and Cady finds herself squeezed in between Janis and Damian who envelop her in a hug and hide finger-bunny ears behind her head.

Gretchen places her iPhone in front of a precariously built tower of rocks and sets the timer. They take a series of jump shots that end up disasters, but when they look over the pictures and laugh together, Cady has never felt so happy in her life.

“It’s been a crazy two years, you guys, but I’m _so_ glad that you’re my friends,” she can’t help but say when they lay on the sand to watch the sunset. Somehow, Damian has manipulated their arrangement to allow her to sit beside Regina and his little wink does not go unnoticed.

“ _Aww_ , Cady, you’re so cute!” Gretchen says, wiping a small tear from her eye. “I’m so glad Regina stopped you and asked you to sit with us when you came to Northshore!”

“Yeah,” Janis cuts in, voice unreadable. “Why _did_ you do that, Regina?”

“Do what?” Regina says.

“Stop Cady in the middle of lunch just to call her pretty and get her to eat with you?” Damian finishes for Janis, a knowing look on his face. “I mean, _sure_ , she was a threat to the Plastic food chain, but with the way she dressed in Junior Year, it couldn’t have been big enough to recruit her into your exclusive little clique.”

Cady turns to face the girl and is surprised to see Regina blushing. It’s the most flustered she’s ever seen her, face red and mouth half-open as though she had something to say but...couldn’t get the words out? Cady raises her eyebrows and smiles in a way that she hopes looks encouraging.

“I…” Regina tries, voice shaky. She composes herself a second later, clearing her throat and straightening her back. “I guess I just wanted to be friends with her,” she says, unable to meet Cady’s eyes. “I mean, yeah, she was a homeschooled jungle freak but...I guess there was something about her that was just...I thought she seemed like a good person to befriend.”

Damian opens his mouth, probably to grill her further, but Janis (astonishingly enough) stops him by holding his arm and shaking her head. Cady, on the other hand, is staring at Regina.

“You just wanted to be friends with me?” she says, voice tinged with disbelief. Regina George, the undoubted queen of Northshore, the girl who could get anyone she wanted with just a flick of her wrist, and who would manipulate anyone who dared get in her way...actually wanted _her_ friendship with no ulterior motive?

That’s when Regina faces her, hackles raised defensively. “What? I can’t just want to be friends with someone? Just ‘cos I was a bitch back then?”

“No, no,” Cady says immediately, hand reaching out against her will to grip Regina’s arm. “I’m just surprised because I didn’t think anyone really wanted to be friends with me. Everyone was mean to me during my first week of school, and apart from Janis and Damian...well, you were one of the first to really reach out to me,” she could stop there, probably _should_ stop there, but her mouth has other ideas. “I guess with all the craziness that happened that year, especially with…especially with Aaron...I thought you might have just done it to play with me, you know? Establish dominance and get him back, so...it’s nice to know that you just wanted to be my friend.”

“I was never interested in Aaron, Cady,” Regina says after a while, eyes flashing dangerously blue. “And I didn’t know that everyone else was being mean to you. They better have stopped.”

“Oh yeah, once I became friends with _you_ , all that ended,” Cady says with a smile, reminiscing the awe she felt at how the other girls immediately left her alone after Regina took her in. She was thrown so suddenly to the top of the food chain thanks to one little blonde in Louboutins and it felt _amazing_ at the time. “I mean, it all backfired eventually, but I was _so_ thankful you took me in even if it was just to keep me in line.”

“It wasn’t,” Regina insists. “And I know I've said this before, but all that shit with Aaron? I’m really sorry about that. It wasn’t fair to you.”

Regina George from a year ago wouldn’t be caught dead apologising, but the ‘sorry’ falls out of her lips naturally and sincerely. Cady wonders at the moment, one half exhilarated to be able to witness Regina’s transformation at the forefront and the other half completely enamoured at how Regina shifts her hand to cover the one Cady placed on her arm a few minutes ago. Their fingers tangle together and Cady has to remind herself that none of this is real, that she’s barely gotten over the breakup, that Regina could never feel the same way — not the same pounding in her chest and numbness in her toes and tingling of her fingers wherever they make eye contact.

“I’m sorry you got hit by that bus,” Cady says and Regina’s face shifts into one of confusion.

“Don’t apologise for things that aren’t your fault,” she starts. “I might have been high on my pain meds, but I’m pretty sure I was clear during Spring Fling — you shouldn’t care what people think about you for that. Is anyone still even bothering you about it? I told everyone it was an accident and you didn’t push me.”

“I’m still sorry. I feel like I hurt you,” Cady’s voice drops to a whisper. Regina’s eyes are the softest blue she’s ever seen, tinged a little orange by the sun that’s already halfway through its cycle back into the water. “No, I _know_ I did. I wasn’t responsible for that bus, but I still hurt you so much that year and, yeah, you hurt me too but I could have been the bigger person.”

_I could’ve protected you from everything that followed._

“It’s over, Cady,” Regina says, mirroring the quietness of her voice. “We can move on from all that now.”

She smiles at her, all warmth and forgiveness that Cady could never have imagined emblazoned on Regina George’s face, and Cady grins back. After a while, Regina looks away to stare at the last few moments of the sunset. Their other friends’ murmurs have also quieted down, quick to relish in the time they had together.

Cady takes a while to look at Regina before turning to her other friends. Janis’ head is on Damian’s shoulder, and Gretchen is holding Karen’s hand, and Regina still hasn’t let go of her own hand on her arm.

Cady thinks that, sure, maybe Aaron isn’t here, but maybe she never really needed him to be. This is perfect as it is. _This_ is exactly what she needed.

**END OF PART 6.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay for healing! also, i'm SO sorry i forgot to update this on thursday. school is eating me up & this completely slipped my mind.  
> on another note, erika leaves mean girls today and i don't know how to cope. have a coping cady instead.


	7. Chapter 7

Somehow, Cady’s hand ends up in Regina’s and she’s trying not to notice how difficult its suddenly become to breathe. It’s soft, and warm, and fits perfectly in her own; it’s the first time she’s considered that maybe her crush on Regina wasn’t quite as small as she had initially made it out to be.

Silence envelops the group for the next half-hour before being interrupted by a growl. Damian laughs sheepishly, patting his stomach before suggesting they return for dinner. 

They head back to Gretchen’s summer home when the sun finally sets and Cady unwillingly pulls her hand away.

They order pizza for dinner because nobody really wants to cook. Another half-hour argument on what to order, and they finally settle on Pepperoni, Cheese, and Meat Lover’s and the six of them gather in the common area on the second floor. Cady’s seated in-between Janis and Damian on the ground while the Plastics occupy the couch. Regina’s leaning on Karen’s shoulder, eyes fixed on her phone while the other two converse.

She’s nibbling away at her cheese pizza and is almost halfway through it when Gretchen speaks to the rest of them. “So...alcohol?”

“You brought some?” Karen gasps, wide-eyed.

“Karen, we bought it together before we left, remember?”

“Ohh, is  _ this _ what that was for?”

Gretchen nods and Karen takes this as her cue to stand, causing Regina to topple over onto the couch. She glares at the two, both of whom quickly head downstairs to get what is presumably alcohol and Janis laughs as Regina loses her grip on her phone. 

It topples to the ground and the former quickly snatches the device, much to Regina’s displeasure. “Jan!”

“You’ve been on this all night! What the hell could you possibly be up to?” Janis exclaims, leaning backwards and out of Regina’s reach. Her arm is outstretched as she squints at the phone while Regina tries to grab it back. “Oh my  _ god _ , are you seriously making a playlist right now? Is this  _ Ed Sheeran? _ ”

“Let me see that!” Damian exclaims, snatching the phone out of Janis’ hands and Regina finally gets off the couch. “What’s the mood of this thing? It’s full of songs that would’ve been cute to a  _ 12-year old _ with their first crush.”

“Ugh!” Regina hisses, finally taking her phone back. Her neck is flushed red. “It’s for Chloe, okay? She just wants something to listen to and she  _ is _ twelve,  _ for your information _ .”

“Chloe?” Damian says.

“Her younger sister,” Janis and Cady say simultaneously. Regina stares, and before the silence can fall flat enough to be awkward, the door slams open revealing Gretchen and Karen, each carrying a box of miscellaneous bottles that Cady can only assume will lead to her inevitable doom later on in the night. She jumps up to help the two girls set the drinks up and Gretchen searches the cabinets for shot glasses.

And just like her very first step into the evil that was alcohol, when everything is all set up, Gretchen meets her by the side of the counter with a glass and an all-too-eager grin. “Cady, do a shot!”

The vodka runs smoothly down Cady’s throat and her chest is on fire in a not-exactly-pleasant way. She forces a grin on her face and refuses a second one, instead opting to bring the rest of the drinks to the common area where everyone else is already waiting, seated in an intimate circle on the floor.

When she sets it down, Damian is looking up at her with bright eyes and an all-too-knowing smile. “So how about a game of truth or dare?”

Much to Cady’s dismay, everyone cheers in agreement.

“Okay, Cady, truth or dare?” Damian says after they spin an empty bottle to choose the first victim. Despite only recently being introduced to the wonders of Netflix, Cady has seen enough coming-of-age films to know that there is no way that this ends well. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she hears her mother telling her not to succumb to peer pressure and to ‘just say no, binti!’ — and yet, under the spotlight of her best friends, she can’t find the will to.

(Plus, it  _ could _ be fun.)

“Okay...dare?”

Janis whistles. “Dare on your first go? Impressive, Caddy.”

A few seconds pass, filled with the murmurs of a group of teenagers trying to calculate the best way to embarrass someone, when Janis pipes up again, bottom lip caught between her teeth in a grin that could only mean bad news. “I dare you to say ‘fuck’!”

“Oh my god,  _ no _ , Janis!” Damian exclaims. “Caddy Heron can  _ absolutely _ not say ‘fuck’. It’ll ruin what good is left in the world.”

“And say it  _ super _ sexily,” Janis simply adds. “Like — in  _ bed _ sexily.”

“ _ Janis! _ ” Damian groans, but it’s filled with good humour. He turns to Cady with a pout, but there is no hint of apology in his eyes. “Well, you heard her, Caddy. Say ‘fuck’ or take a shot.”

Cady frowns. Well, it’s not as bad as she thought it would be, and it isn’t like she hasn’t said the word before (she hasn’t), so she figures that the wise decision would be to just go along with the dare rather than drink some more. Her tolerance is already on the floor as it is, and she’s not quite sure she wants to tempt fate so early in the night. “...fuck?”

“All the good! Gone!” Damian cries out, falling to his knees.

“You didn’t say it sexily. Shot for you!” Janis says, pushing a glass her way.

“Wh — that’s not fair!” Cady says, but she grabs the shot and downs it anyway because she knows there’s no arguing with Janis when she gets like this. The order continues and Damian gets dared to Instagram live himself doing a handstand, Gretchen spills about having myopia and needing glasses, and Karen is forced to reveal the last person she kissed.

“Oh, that’s easy! It was Gretchen!”

The room immediately falls into stunned silence apart from Gretchen’s soft squeal. Damian and Janis are having an optical ping-pong match, looking at Karen, then Gretchen, then back to Karen so quickly that Cady gets dizzy; as if the mental mathematics of the logistics of the kiss aren’t confusing her enough.

“Wait,  _ what? _ ” Cady says, and she doesn’t really mean to say it aloud, but it comes out anyway. “How—when— _ what? _ ”

Janis and Damian are nodding their agreement to her befuddlement, and surprisingly, the only one in the room who doesn’t seem all that shocked is Regina whom Gretchen has been staring at worriedly, lips pursed and hands held together, trembling only the slightest.

“I mean...we were gonna tell you guys…” Gretchen starts, voice unnaturally high. “It’s just that…”

“What, like it wasn’t obvious?” Regina suddenly says, and Cady is surprised to find a light smile on her face. “You don’t need to explain yourselves. I’m happy for you two. I’m sure we all are.”

“Yeah,” Janis adds, also staring at Regina. Her eyes are narrowed and her brows are scrunched up, but Cady doesn’t detect any malice in her tone so she figures it’s nothing to worry about. “Good job, guys.”

Karen grins and throws them all a thumbs up, and Gretchen lets out a sigh of relief. The game moves on to Regina and Cady braces herself as the girl leans forward and says, ‘dare’.

“I dare you to say something nice about everyone in the room!” Karen says immediately, and they all laugh as Regina’s face sours. “And you have to mean it!”

“Jesus, Karen, that’s so boring,” Regina says, but she’s smiling as she says it. A pause. “Fine, though.”

She takes a deep breath as though struggling with the words.

“Karen, I know I’ve called you stupid too many times to count, but you’re actually one of the most insightful people I know, and I’m glad you finally got together with Gretchen because god knows how long I’ve watched you two flirt with each other without either of you figuring it out—and Gretchen, sure, you can be too talkative and annoying sometimes, but you’re also one of the most enthusiastic people I know and will probably be a great journalist someday. Or gossip columnist...the way you’re able to get people is, well, a gift.”

Gretchen looks a second away from crying on the spot, and it’s only Karen’s hand, slipped in hers, that seems to hold the tears at bay for the moment.

“And Damian, I’d say the same for you. There’s no one better who could’ve become Janis’ best friend and you are undoubtedly the funniest and most theatrically talented person  _ ever _ , and I will personally come for anyone who tells you otherwise,” Regina says, drawing out a small laugh from everyone; then her eyes lock on Janis and she smiles in the way that even Cady knows is reserved only for the girl she used to call her best friend. 

“Janis...wow, I’m not drunk enough for this one, but there is so much heart in you and even if you can be a mega-bitch sometimes, I still feel like you’re one of the only people in the world who actually gets me because I’m a mega-bitch too.”

Janis snorts, but her smile perks up a little bit, and Regina takes this as a cue to keep going.

“And I’m not going to waste tonight with any more apologies because I know you’d hate that, so I’ll just say...thank you — for the wake-up call and for forgiving me and everything else in-between. I think you’re strong and brave and I wish I could be more like you, and,  _ god _ , you know the rest!” Regina laughs, turning around to the last person in their circle that she still hasn’t addressed.

Green meets blue, and Cady’s heart thumps harder in her chest at the sight of Regina’s shining eyes. She’s starting to feel more than a little flustered, but she can’t find it in herself to look away from her.

“And Cady. People don’t give you enough credit,” Regina starts, first quietly then increasing a little in volume as she finds the words. “You’re smart and beautiful and probably the closest thing to the living embodiment of sunshine that I know. I mean, if you could bring us all together, then you must be something special, right?” she breathes out, looking around at the rest of their friends as though memorising the moment, before continuing. “You’re so kind and, sure, you mess up sometimes, but you always,  _ always _ pick yourself back up. Your heart is in the right place and your smile  _ always  _ brightens every room you grace it with and—well, not to bring up too much of the past, but Aaron highkey doesn’t know what he’s missing out on if he let you go  _ that _ easily.”

The lump grows exponentially larger in Cady’s throat, and she finds that it isn’t to the mention of Aaron, but rather to the shy smile Regina graces her way after dropping that bomb of a monologue. She opens her mouth, probably to say something stupid, but before she can find her voice, Janis speaks.

“You’re pretty alright yourself, ‘Gina.”

And almost without prompting, the circle tightens and they’re all embracing the blonde who’s rolling her eyes at the gesture but is laughing wetly. Cady finds herself squished in between Gretchen and Damian, and the warmth she feels isn’t only from their body heat and the alcohol. They all sit, arm in arm, cheeks pressed and grins shared, and the world seems to fall silent at the soft moment it witnesses.

“Aw, I love you guys!” Karen exclaims once they let go of one another. Regina and Gretchen are wiping tears from their eyes, the latter  _ much more so _ than the former, while Damian distributes more drinks.

“To us!” he says, lifting a can of beer. It’s not quite the glorious toast of kings, but it is  _ so much more _ than enough when everyone repeats in chorus and drinks in tune. In fact, it’s pretentious and presumptuous and more than a little strange, but they figure there’s no better time to be all that than now, in the Wieners’ beach house during the summer after high school. 

“Alright, alright, get on with the game already!”

The game lasts a little bit longer, but nothing else that is particularly note-worthy occurs. Janis gets dared to hug Regina for a minute and it’s a little uncomfortable, but not enough to  _ not _ still be funny. Cady posts a risky selfie on her story tagging Aaron with the caption ‘hot girl summer; don’t need a man’, but she’s weak and clarifies it’s a joke after he sends a confused ‘???’ in her private messages.

By the time it’s 11pm, they’ve all had more than enough to drink, and somehow their arrangement in their little circle has changed. Janis has found herself in-between Karen and Gretchen, with the two of them laying on her opposite shoulders while Damian braids her hair. Cady, on the other hand, is seated beside Regina who has taken to laying down on her lap and drawing distracting circles on her knee. They’ve stopped the games and have taken to sharing stories.

“And then I told him — ‘no way! I’ve seen the way you look at me!’ and he just runs away and ghosts me for a week.  _ A week! _ ” Damian exclaims, and they all laugh. Cady feels like the whole room is moving, and her head feels more than a little light, and she’s gone completely numb on the leg that Regina’s head has been laying on for the past half hour, but she’s definitely not going to be moving any time soon.

“Wait till I tell you about the guy I had a crush on when I was five!” she pipes up in the lull after Damian’s story; and the night goes on.

It’s 2am and Regina stumbles into the room right after her, and she’s laughing in the most adorably drunken way. The door slams shut automatically and Cady does her best to make it to her bed. With a Herculean amount of effort, she manages to find her way towards it without dying in the process.

Cady sits down, clutching onto the mattress as the room spins. 

To her surprise, Regina plops down beside her. Her hand brushes against Cady’s and, before she can process it, she feels their fingers intertwine just like they did on the beach during the sunset that felt like a forever ago. 

Regina turns to her and Cady thinks they must be closer than she initially thought because she can feel Regina’s breath on her lips. She smells like lemon and vodka and some of the smoke that caught on her clothes, probably from talking to Janis outside a little earlier on in the night, and it does nothing to help her intoxication. 

In a brief moment of weakness, Cady finds herself staring at Regina’s lips, painted a light shade of pink. They look soft and there’s nothing she wants more than to kiss them right now, the overwhelming urge to do so only restrained by the last bit of rationality that her brain clutches onto in its drunken state.

Instead, Cady manages a little, “Regina?” as the other girl turns and angles her body towards her.

Regina’s thumb is stroking the back of her hand where their fingers are still intertwined. Her other hand rests, warm and light on Cady’s bare leg. She’s also staring at her with affection and intoxication and something  _ else _ swimming in her blue eyes. 

It’s dark, and deep, and kind of hot, Cady thinks as the look shoots electricity down her spine.

This is intimate.  _ Much _ too intimate for their situation, with the rest of their friends still laughing rambunctiously outside and a million other reasons in-between. It is  _ much _ too intimate for a crush Cady only realised recently, and she hears her heart beat a frantic melody strung together with both eagerness and confusion.

“I meant what I said earlier, Cady...about you being beautiful and smart and all that...” Regina whispers, smile replaced with hooded eyes and a worried bottom lip. Her voice comes out a whisper, soft and husky in the space between them. What she says makes Cady’s stomach do a little backflip and if the room wasn’t spinning before, it might as well be  _ upside down _ after she realises what Regina asks next.

“Could I kiss you right now?”

And just like that, all aforementioned rationality escapes her. 

She nods, almost robotically, almost too excitedly, and Regina leans forward a little while Cady meets her in-between.

She can’t help the little sound of pleasure that escapes her the moment Regina’s lips meet hers. She’s never kissed a girl before, but she thinks she likes it — Regina’s lips are soft, and smooth, and taste like strawberry lip gloss. Her breath smells like vodka and it makes Cady’s head spin.

She feels Regina’s hand pull away from her own and, suddenly, there are fingers tangled in her hair, tugging and scratching in places that draw out even more embarrassing sounds from her lips. Cady groans into the kiss and places her hands on the back of Regina’s neck, angling herself so that her legs wrap around Regina’s waist and she’s basically straddling her.

Regina laughs under her breath as Cady lowers her onto the bed and they break the kiss for a few seconds to adjust, but come back to it the minute they find an ideal position, with Cady atop Regina, one hand on the side of her head, the other on her waist.

She pulls away for another second, blinking to adjust herself to the sight of Regina George, cheeks flushed and hair spread out in a halo around her head. Her lips are red and swollen, all traces of the pink lipgloss from earlier gone, and her light blue eyes are shaded a different level of navy.

The room’s a blur but  _ she  _ is soberingly clear.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” Cady says softly before plunging in to get lost in Regina’s lips once more. Heat is coursing throughout her body, and she  _ wants _ more, but she’s also  _ so _ goddamn sleepy. Regina’s arms are wrapped around her and their kiss is simmering down from needy to something  _ much _ too gentle for what had earlier felt like a drunken hookup. 

She can still feel Regina’s smile on her lips, though, and the burning in her chest becomes a warmth that she can’t remember feeling for a while now and,  _ wow _ , she kind of has to rethink everything she knows about crushing on people and making moves.

“We can worry ‘bout it in the morning,” Regina slurs once Cady pulls away, the smile not leaving her lips. Cady feels herself nod, and tries to lower herself to kiss Regina again, but ends up missing, leaving a kiss instead on her neck.

“‘Kay,” Cady murmurs against Regina’s neck. A few loud peals of laughter are heard from outside the door, Janis and Damian by the sound of it, but it fails to jolt her. Their room is cold in the night, but Regina’s emanating so much warmth, and her body is so soft against her own, providing a comfort she’s never quite known with Aaron.

She’s  _ so _ gay.

“Wait…” Cady says suddenly, struggling to stay awake despite the alcohol-induced drowsiness pumping through her system. The question is at the tip of her tongue and all she needs to do is push it out — “So you’re  _ not _ straight?”

First there is silence, and Cady begins to wonder if she asked the wrong thing, if Regina will leave now, if it was maybe too much too soon, but instead Regina laughs, high and soft and  _ perfect _ , the sweet sound making Cady laugh a little bit too. 

“We can worry about it in the morning.”

Cady nods against Regina’s neck, accepting the answer in her drunken state. She realises she probably would have accepted it sober as well, unable to deny Regina anything — much less time.

“M'kay...we’ll talk tomorrow…” she slurs, closing her eyes before drifting into a fretless slumber.

“Tomorrow.”

**END OF PART 7.**


	8. Chapter 8

Tomorrow comes much too fast and Cady wakes up to a pounding headache. Her entire left side is numb and her stomach flips when she realises the reason behind that.

Regina George is lying on her, eyes closed and lips slightly parted and hair framing her face like a golden halo of light. The sunshine hits her face just perfectly and Cady is rendered a little breathless at how beautiful the girl is like this — soft, and sweet, and the most vulnerable she’s ever seen her.

Just then, the gravity of what occurred between them last night hits her like, well, a bus, and she tenses just enough to wake Regina who groans, shifting a little to the side and wrapping an arm around Cady’s waist.

“Oh my god,” Cady says aloud, and Regina’s eyes blink open, wide and barely awake. “Regina...oh my god.”

“Jesus, Cady, calm down,” Regina murmurs, hand lifting from her waist to cradle her head. Cady misses the warmth immediately, but there’s little else she can do but grimace. “Ow, what the hell happ—” she freezes and the little grogginess left in her is shaken away as her jaw drops. “Oh, shit, did we—?”

“We just kissed if that’s what you’re worried about!” Cady says, pulling away a little even if her sleep-deprived body protests at the loss of warmth. “I mean, not  _ just _ , but we didn’t have sex or anything and it’s not like I was even thinking about it like that! I mean…”

Regina’s eyes flood with panic and Cady is almost sure that the girl is going to run away, but she surprises them both when she takes a deep breath and settles a little more in bed. “Okay...okay, so  _ that _ happened.”

“Y-yeah?”

“Okay. Cady,” Regina starts, rolling to her side so they can face each other. Her lips are pursed in a grimace and her arms wrap around her frame defensively. “My therapist has been on my ass about this for the longest time, but I think it’s about time I cleared some things up with you and there’s no better moment than now.”

Cady nods because there’s nothing else she can do, and she’s never been in a situation like this. She’s never even kissed Aaron, her  _ boyfriend _ (once upon a time), on a horizontal surface, and she doesn’t exactly think there’s a clearcut solution to facing the aftermath of kissing your straight friend whose exhibited homophobic behaviour in the past.

“So...I’m a lesbian,” Regina deadpans and Cady’s brows shoot up. “Janis already knows. I told her after I apologised last year, so I’m sure that Damian knows at this point as well. Gretch and Karen know too. I told them after...the bus…”

“O-okay…”Cady says softly, trying not to feel hurt at the fact that she was apparently the only one left out of the know amongst their friends.

“I hope you don’t feel bad that I didn’t tell you! Actually, the reason I didn’t was…” Regina pauses, taking a deep breath. “Look, you asked me yesterday, at the beach, why I invited you to sit with us. The real reason is ‘cos I thought you were pretty — like,  _ really pretty _ ,” then the words start tumbling out, quicker and quicker. “And then I heard you liked Aaron, and I got jealous so — oh my god, I know this backfired  _ so _ badly, but it sounded like a good idea at the time — I got together with him to make  _ you _ jealous and, well, you know the rest of that story.

“And for the rest of Junior year I pretended not to like you like that anymore because you were happy with him and, for a while, I was happy you were happy too. But then you guys started fighting and then you broke up and,” she stops, taking a second to purse her lips together. “I was happy, kind of! I mean, I was until I saw how sad that made you so all those feelings from last year came rushing back and I hauled Gretchen and Karen to your place, and bought all that food, and that hugeass stuffed toy that was a  _ pain _ to fit in my car by the way, and…”

Cady blinks, thoughts drifting to Simba and the suspicious look on Janis’ face when she saw him and asked who it had come from. She realises now that perhaps it was a telling sign — Regina George wasn’t exactly the type to give presents, much less ones that clearly inconvenienced her.

“Well, I convinced Gretchen to push through with this beach trip thing ‘cos I thought it would be good for you, to help you move on, at least,” Regina says. “And I’m sorry for not telling you, but I just wasn’t ready — and last night was  _ not _ supposed to happen, and I’m sorry if I forced myself on you! Oh my god, did I…?”

“No, no!” Cady cuts in, hand shooting out to hold Regina’s. They both look, wide-eyed, at the sudden contact, and Cady pulls away a little. “I...I wanted it too…”

“You mean…?

Cady bites her lip, weighing her options in her head. Her heart has been running on overdrive since Regina confessed to liking her and she’s not quite sure how she was to reconcile with the sudden fact, brought to light. “Look, I-I had a few realisations recently, and, well, I do like you too. In  _ that _ way, I mean. Like, the romantic way, otherwise I wouldn’t have let you ki — anyway!”

Regina’s looking up at her and Cady feels her breath leave her at the pure hope that’s shining in her eyes, and she wants this,  _ god _ , does she want this, but there’s still a little ache in her chest for that boy with a superman smile and the most charming brown eyes, and she doesn’t think it fair for any of them for her to just jump at this like her heart is telling her to.

“It’s not a no,” she says, and Regina’s eyes widen. “If you’re asking, that is! For us to...be a...thing. It’s not a no because I like you back and I liked kissing you and all but I think...I think I need a little more time.”

“To get over Aaron?” Regina asks curiously, and there’s no hint of malice or jealousy in her tone. She simply wants to know.

“Yeah, I guess,” Cady says. “I mean, this trip has been great and you have no idea how much I needed this right now.”

Regina smirks.

“Okay, maybe you do have an idea,” she corrects. “But I feel like I just need some more time. I’m new to this and I’ve never been with...a girl. You’ve had all this time to come to terms with it and I’ve just, well...it’s  _ a lot. _ ”

Regina nods, “I understand.”

“But it’s not a no,” Cady says, and she’s about to say more when someone bangs on their door, the sound smashing thoroughly through the moment.

“Yo! Wake up!” Janis’ voice yells from behind the door. “Y’all are probably hungover as fuck, but we need to get back before 3pm otherwise Damian’s gran is going to  _ kill _ him so dress up and pack! We’re getting take-out then leaving!”

Regina snorts, rolling her eyes and promptly sitting up. “Well, I guess that’s our cue.”

“Yeah,” Cady says, still laying down. She can’t help the twinge of disappointment that echoes in her voice and Regina clearly catches onto it because she turns to face her, tongue in cheek.

“Don’t be like that,” she laughs, hand reaching out to gently cradle Cady’s face and,  _ god _ , she might  _ actually _ die on the spot. “It’s not a no, right?”

Cady laughs at that too, her own hand reaching up to keep Regina’s in place. “Just give me some time. I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

“You can have all the time you need,” Regina says. “But not too much, right?”

Cady grins, shoving her hand off playfully, “Right.”

They head back home and Regina drives after taking an Advil (or three) for her headache. Cady is seated shotgun while their friends lay, passed out in the backseat apart from Janis who’s playing a game on her phone, no visible signs of a hangover present.

Regina’s phone is hooked to the radio and they’re cruising the highway while 80s songs play through the speakers. When ‘The Longest Time’ cues up, Cady can’t help but smile and look at the girl beside her, thrown back to an earlier time.

By earlier, she really means three days ago. 

“I realised I liked you when you sang along to this, I think,” she says nonchalantly, bobbing her head to the song, and Regina’s eyes widen.

“Oh? That’s all it takes to get  _ the _ Cady Heron to fall for you?”

“Well, that and being an absolute hottie.”

“Oh my god, will you guys  _ shut up? _ ” Janis groans from the backseat, and Cady feels warmth travel through her face. Oh  _ right _ , she was still awake. “I know you’ve been pining each other for the better half of the trip, but it’s kind of gross to witness it.”

“God, just be happy for me, Jan!” Regina throws back, tongue-in-cheek.

“I  _ am _ happy for you! You guys are just making me sick!”

They all laugh and Regina cranks the music up louder. Cady leans back in her seat and glances out the window. The world is blurry because of how fast they’re going and it’s rendered green and blue and grey. Montauk is fading slowly in the side mirror and she thinks of all the memories she’s leaving behind in the Wieners’ beach home. 

“You think we’ll come back next year?” she says to Regina.

“If college hasn’t killed us by then?” Regina says. “I’ll make it happen.”

They drive.

**EPILOGUE:**

It’s a Saturday night and Cady is laying down atop a giant, stuffed lion named Simba. Before her, her laptop plays ‘Devil Wears Prada’ while beside her sits the one and only Regina George, eating popcorn and watching the movie attentively. Her blonde hair is pulled back and she’s wearing nothing but an old Northshore t-shirt and running shorts that don’t-exactly-clash but also don’t-exactly-match, and it’s a sight that Cady might have been surprised to see a month ago, but after countless sleepovers, movie nights, and just general spending time together, she’s not quite so shocked anymore.

In fact, things have become so familiar. Her head is leaning on Regina’s shoulder and their arms are linked and it’s a position that they’ve found themselves reverting back to whenever they lay together like this. An unusual burst of warmth blooms in her chest as she thinks about how easily they fit together — like two sides of an equation, finally balanced.

Regina laughs at the screen, promptly interrupting her thoughts, and she should  _ probably _ be paying more attention to the movie, but it’s the third time she’s seen it since she moved to Chicago and she pretty much memorises the plot by this point.

Besides, Anne Hathaway has got nothing on Regina George.

And it’s then that the latter notices her staring.

“What?” Regina says, turning to face her with an affectionate smile on her face. Her brows are knitted together and her nose scrunched up and Cady has never been quite so certain of what she’s about to do. “I know you’re not watching the movie, Cady. I have eyes.”

“I think I’m ready.”

The sentence come out of Cady’s mouth, soft but steady and oh-so-sure. She sees confusion paint the other girl’s face and more words fall from her lips like rain to make up for the vagueness. “It’s been a month since the beach trip, Regina, and I know that I said I needed more time, but I think I’m ready now. Like, for real.”

Regina’s lips are parted in an ‘o’, and silence quickly falls between the two, but she’s not worried about it because the blue in Regina’s eyes are so freakin’ bright and she feels her grip around her arm tighten. When she finally finds her voice, all she asks is, “You mean —  _ us? _ Becoming, like, an actual thing?”

As if their friends didn’t already catch on; the two of them had been spending a  _ lot _ of time together since the beach trip and all there really was left to do was confirm it. All that was left to do was for Cady to just say the word, but she’s never really felt like the time was right. It had been too soon, after Aaron and the break-up and high school.

But now?

“Yeah, us,” Cady laughs, interlacing her fingers with the blonde’s and bumping their heads together. Regina’s eyes are the brightest she’s ever seen them, wide and blue and searching for a single smidge of doubt. 

She will find none of it.

Cady’s never felt quite so bold before, but now, in front of the dim, fluorescent light of her laptop, she feels like a totally different person.

“Let’s do this,” Cady whispers, and Regina cuts off the rest of it with her lips.

**END.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> comments are always appreciated.  
> you can find me on tumblr [here!](https://rizalistas.tumblr.com/)  
> updates on thursdays gmt+8!


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